In the plastics industry today there is a significant effort to reclaim, recycle and re-use all products made from plastics. This effort is due to rising cost of virgin polymers, the increased demand for plastics in a worldwide economy and an effort to reduce the amount of synthetic turf going to waste in landfills. As a result, plastic products today are being designed with recyclability in mind. Recycled plastics are being used to supplement or replace virgin polymers in new products to reduce raw material costs.
However, there are certain industries that are major users of plastics that have not designed their products with end-use recyclability in mind. One such major user of thermoplastic polymers is the synthetic turf industry. Synthetic turf has grown in popularity as a sports playing field surface and as alternative landscape material due to its low maintenance requirements and environmental advantages. There are over 5,000 sports fields nationwide that use synthetic turf as their playing surface today.
In the United States today, most synthetic turf is made with thermoplastic face fibers, such as polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon or combinations thereof, thermoplastic primary backing materials, such as polypropylene or polyester terephthalate or combinations thereof and thermosetting precoat materials, such as thermosetting polyurethane. While the thermoplastic materials used for the face fiber and primary backing material is easily recyclable, the thermosetting polymer used for the precoat is not. It is generally accepted in the industry today that thermosetting polymers cannot be recycled. Therefore, prior attempt to recycle synthetic turf have often included efforts to separate the thermoplastic material from the thermosetting material. However, processes used to separate thermoplastic and thermosetting materials are labor intensive, costly and inefficient.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a system for recycling synthetic turf. Specifically, it would be desirable to provide a system for recycling synthetic turf that is relatively easy and efficient to perform and recycles the entire synthetic turf product; i.e., recycle both the thermoplastic and the thermosetting materials together. It would also be desirable to provide a recycled synthetic turf product that can be used as a replacement for virgin thermoplastic polymers that does not require further processing to make the recycled product useful in other processes.